Photo story of the week: An epic dancer shoot in an inverted room

A month ago, I got in touch with my old friends over at Little Boxes Theater—a recreational performance art/photography studio in San Francisco—about shooting a fun personal project. Since I love to fabricate things in my workshop for shoots, I asked if they'd be up for collaborating on something along those lines.

Aaron Simunovich (one of the studio managers), had a lot of experience woodworking, and threw out the idea of an inverted room. Without any doubts, I said something along the lines of, "yes, let's make this happen right now." I immediately got to work on a detailed 3D model of what it might look like structurally, and from there, we budgeted what material we'd need in order to get this set done.

I spent the following 5 days commuting over the San Francisco bridge, gradually building the set with Aaron, and us making frequent trips to the hardware stores... and junkyards. This was all a big experiment, but I called my good friend Valentina Reneff-Olson to model, since this trippy composition just called for a flexible dancer. Combine this two-wall set with a bit of intricate posing, and you end up with a series of photos that emulate anti-gravity perfectly.

Generally, the concept was to have the dancer shooting out of what looked like a painting/mirror frame. Oh yeah, and rain. There was rain.

Technical Details

If I told you how long we actually shot for, you'd probably think I was exaggerating. The truth is, once we had everybody at the studio, we only had 2 hours to get something good. Since I had to travel back to LA for an upcoming shoot, and their studio was booked out, there was just no way to do it the following day.

Little Boxes Theater likes to store set designs in-house, but since I don't live anywhere near San Francisco, I was not going to leave back to Los Angeles without content that was up to my expectations. Two hours to get both photo and video content? No pressure.

*Game face*

Since I wanted to test the stills and slow motion of my new GH5, I used that body with a 25mm f/1.7 lens, and did everything handheld with the 5-axis stabilization turned on. There were two lighting setups being used simultaneously:

One for stills:

Two 600w heads

Reflector

One for video:

LED panel

Reflector

1K Arri fresnel

Since I was shooting slow motion at a higher shutter speed, I was really pushing the GH5 settings to see how it performed on this test. The power output of the strobes overpowered the constant lights, so for stills we just kept the constant lights on to help with auto-focus.

Together, we all improvised a bunch of choreography and posing for Valentina to follow, and our stylist, Virginie Suos, switched out the clothing after each video sequence in the rain. I got oddly comfortable shooting atop a scaffolding, with my head tilted 90º the whole time.

This shoot ended up being 75% stills and 25% video, so the minute-long short film that I threw together was cut only from about 6 shots only.

To that I'd say: "not too shabby Daniel, not too shabby."

Check out the full behind the scenes video below:

Daniel DeArco is a Los Angeles-based photographer, filmmaker, and inventor who first picked up a camera in 2011 after he severely broke his neck. Since then, he's made a name shooting creative portraits and commercial work. You can find more of his work on his website, Instagram, and YouTube.

My stomach churned when I first saw this. Tiny pumps of acid flooded my GI system breaking up a logjam that had existed for days. I sat on the toilet for almost a half hour with several showers and flushes in between. I then returned to DPR to post this comment.

I agree with this. There is I suppose the adage " if you haven't got anything nice to say then say nothing at all" but sharing art has to mean that opinion will follow. Just like if something happens to impress me and I comment, if something is completely awful it's equally relevant to comment.Like you, I feel slightly bad for the guy - that I'm being 'harsh' but he put it out there so I balance that out with the notion that SOMEONE has got to tell him.

Yeah, it's not doing it for me either. If it wasn't rotated 90 degrees (it's NOT inverted!) I'd like it more, because the rotation is so obvious that it insults my intelligence. The set is, frankly, half-assed. It would be a bit more convincing if they had taken 10 seconds in post to straighten the "wall" on the right. And then the self-congratulatory behind-the-scenes video? As if they're the first people to think of this sort of thing? As if anyone is wondering how they did it? Please.

All the behind the scenes re-enforcement of these kinds of shoots does not make these kinds of shoots any more interesting, and this one seems particularly poorly executed. The model seems stiff, the lighting is ugly, the set looks obviously like a set, and the music is silly. I'm all for people having a go at being clever, don't get me wrong, but any one of those things could have been improved with just a tiny bit of thought.

First, your use of the word "truth" is simply hyperbole and subjective opinion.

I don't really think the posted photo is amazing. However, I think that the effort to contribute the plans and background information behind the construction of the shot are interesting content and (note importantly) an invested effort to contribute some minor bit of constructive ideas to a photo of the week entry, which frankly isn't always the case.

I can't imagine what more you're looking for in one of these posts, but you obviously have nothing of value to add.

So in this case using the word "truth" is "hyperbole"? All I said was compared to what was accomplished 66 years ago for Astaire's "Royal Wedding" dance this setup is quite simple and it is. Did you even read the article in the link I posted? Have you watched the video?

You should learn to refrain from personal attacks in the future. Calling people out as "losers" without any provocation doesn't play well and makes you look small.

No symbolism as far as I can see, just a bit of photographic fun being (heavily) marketed as a calling card for the photographer. He will, judging by historical precedent, grow up eventually.

DPR is such a valuable resource, for the scientific and engineering expertise they offer, that we can forgive the occasional faux pas when they venture into field of art photography. No harm - no foul.

GREAT JOB..!!!I can't help but remembering a video I saw some years ago in which some friends let a drunken fellow sleep into an inverted room... The expression on his face when he woke up...Priceless..!!

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